Hello From Tokyo, my name is Mania Carta and i am CG Generalist and self-taught Artist, 

You can find more about me in Artstation if you are interested, sorry for my English.

https://www.artstation.com/maniacarta

In this forum i will post my W.I.P and quick breakdown of what i am making.

Before i showcase what i am making, i just saw the CC Digital Human 2020 Competition in internet, i wish i saw it before but anyway i will try to make things fast in those 3 days remaining ,
Ok let's start, my Character Entry for this contest is my favorite protagonist character of Final Fantasy : Sephiroth but with my own version and vision.

For that, the tools i am using to make this project is Blender for modeling and shaping and i use it in any production when making characters or anything else's, CC Creator, Marvelous Designer, Zbrush, Substance Painter, iClone then Unreal Engine.

Before anything i always gather information using Puref to know which kind of direction i will go for, but also the look and likeness of the character i want to make at the end and the final piece of artwork.





Ok so first we need a body male character to start with, so i start my base form in Character Creator.



Ok at first glance character look nice but i am looking for a male but most important to make the character look more fantasy in face design.and this is what i achieve it within character creator only, no Zbrush yet because i really want to see what character creator can offer.













Testing different lighting using Keylight, Fill, Rim and Point lights.












Ok after i found what i am looking for to start with, i will jump to Blender to create hair for Sephiroth, i will not got so much in details how to make hair in Blender they are tons of techniques and tutorials in internet but i have my own workflow which  i will share it below.

 First i import the mesh trough fbx format or obj from Character Creator, then import it to Blender, i select the scalp of the character to cut it and make it a separate mesh from that, i paint vertex group, normally for Sephiroth 3 vertex group is fine to get the shape i want, you can see it below.














After i paint my vertex group for each part, i use particle hair system to start shaping the hair, it's the same as Xgen if you are a maya user but in Blender is different but easy to use, to start you create one spline and shape it properly to fit the hair design of sephiroth then you i start to interpolate the hair by drawing in different section and below the result after comb and drawing hairs in the scalp.








Once i am done with those all vertex group and shape the hair to fit the design i want, i convert the particle hair to spline, then i rotate all spline to face the camera so you get basically something below but.as for now i am looking for the shape and i need to to get it right before i convert it to hair game card one thing it's important when you convert you hair to card you need to lower the particle count like 3 or 4 particles for every vertex group.













Now with the hair card created, i will use one UV card and duplicate it to create my textures i also use an Add-on called Hair tool and Hair net , basically it let you draw strip of card or curves in the mesh then you convert it to curves or cards, it let you generate alpha map, normal map and all PBR textures in the fly to use for game engines such as Unreal and Unity.

After testing my hair shader in Blender and the design i am looking for i send it to character creator to fit my character design and below some W.I.P inside Blender and character creator using all latest futures of real-time rendering and lighting,




















And here is in Character Creator, i really wanted to push the limit of this tool as it's real-time engine





















Ok that's all, tomorrow task will be the main clothes.



I will start Marvelous Designer for making base clothes then shape and fit everything in Blender and Zbrush.




マニア　カレタ

Hello again from Tokyo,

This my update W.I.P of Sephiroth, i focused on making the lower body and shoes base modeling in blender and send it to Character Creator for pose testing i might send it also after to substance painter and Zbrush to get more normal map details and texturing details, but in Blender i can do all that, but because of this contest i will showcase different tool i use, to make the vision piece of artwork i have in my mind which is the Young Sephiroth, as also i focused on making his Weapon the Masamune, it was fully made in Blender with PBR Shader and Nodes, below are the Look Dev of my workflow.


Masamune Design



























Sephiroth Character Design W.I.P























































































After i see the character coming to life with what i have in mind, next step is making all remaining clothes and send them to Blender and Zbrush for more refinements 




マニア　カレタ

Hello, great job, I really like the way you make the hair of Sephiroth. あきらめないでください！それに、ぼくのエイゴもがわるいだからごめなさい。

日本人アーティストですか。フォーラム内で初めて見ました。自分も日本人です。セフィロスの髪は、カッコよく決まっています。頑張ってください。
Are you a Japanese artist? I saw it for the first time in the forum. I am also Japanese. Sephiroth's hair is cool. Please do your best.

The forum is an amateur.
フォーラムは素人です。

ありがとうございます。
この競争について聞いたばかり。




マニア　カレタ

どうもありがとうございました。

マニア　カレタ

Hello  Again from Tokyo


Before i will post my last work, i first thank Reallusion to make this Contest and let artists give there best of making characters, it was really nice experience discovering there new tools and i found it became more robust than before and the freedom of making character have have no more limit so it was worth it to buy there product, really the company step toward a high technology thanks to the team and all there hardwork .




















Character Creator 3 and iClone 7























マニア　カレタ